Video Fascination : Perkinput Braille-based text entry for smartphones

Last year RantWoman spent several sessions being a crash test dummy for Perkinput, a very fun Braille-based input method for touch-screen devices includes smart phones and tablets.

RantWoman highly recommends this video:



RantWoman really liked Perkinput. RantWoman liked being able to type fairly quickly even when entering half a braille cell at a time on a Smartphone. (RantWoman might find herself tempted to test the workability of full six dot input on a Smartphone except that RantWoman has pretty large fingers in the first place. In the second place, RnatWOman envisions wanting to do text input sometimes on places like the bus wheretwo hands would not really be available.

RantWoman liked being able to type fairly quickly with fairly crude motions. RantWoman found this much less tiresome than moving fingers around a small space for either of the two input methods she tried with Voiceover. These methods involved either sliding a finger around until one heard the desired letter and a second tap or another tap-based method RantWoman does not even remeber very well.

The Perkinput RantWoman  demoed only supports grad 1 uncontracted Braille. RantWoman thinks Grade 2 would be a valuable extension especially for fluent Braille uers . HOWEVER, RantWOman thinks the simple letter map is easy enough to learn that there might even besoesighted users who would like Perkinput for soem of the same ergonomic reasons RantWoman does.

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